Periscope by McKinsey is a suite of tools for collecting learnings, analytics

Our entire industry is fragmented, over half of companies that source data did not exist ten years ago and they may not exist ten years form now

Technology is not the driver of change, client needs and circumstances are the drivers of change, they are being asked to do far more with budgets lower than they used to be, they much get creative

Behavioural data and analytics techniques to analyze that data is suddenly easily available and analyzable, this changes everything about being able to identify insights and work in an agile way, can get to 80/20 answers more quickly, we don’t need the 100% answer, we need to make progress on problem solving

Are analytics pushing the business forward, are the ‘researchers’ falling behind and failing to get seat at the table?

Need to elevate the quality and consistency of data so that the leadership is never getting three answers to the same question nor are employees hearing diverging answers

You must have a c-suite leader and hopefully the chief financial officer who has a longer tenure in a company, not the chief marketing officer

The CMO needs to spend time developing strategies not waiting to get data, let the machines do the heavy lifting so the team can spend their time strategizing

What is the role of the methodologist, understanding fit for purpose of all the tools, this is why we’re seeing so much fragmentation,

In the USA, people are attracted by tools. In the EU, they are more focused on ideas and creativity, and try to be creative all through the entire process. Need to be less technologically focused in the USA.

Try assigning various people on th c-suite to BE a person in a segment, have them go shopping for her, experience her, all to get them to empathize more clearly, because c-suite lives are so completely different from their segments

Is automation a dirty word? Machine learning templates and speeds everything up, may eliminate bias of an individual person although it will perpetuate bias that exists within the data

We need to present data for ten minutes and then discuss the oilers and solutions for the remaining 50 minutes

Automation frees up time to expand capacity and do more, many things will soon be automated. We must adapt to this or fall by the wayside.

Buyers are slow to adopt automation, automation is a dirty word because they think it is DIY and it will be more work. It will actually free up resources and allow you to do more once you are trained and moving forward.

Do you want to be at a data collection conference in five years or at an insights conferences? Your business must adopt automation.

People don’t CARE if you automate, they want better research insights and thinking. You must have automation to get there.

Automation may not cut your budget but it allows you to move your budget into higher value endeavours.

What should samplers do? Advise on representativity, enforce length of interview limits, consult on questionnaire design, restrict to mobile only, forbid mobile-unfriendly. it is an absutive relationship – clients don’t want to pay for consumer friendly and respectful questionnaires.

There is no such thing as a non-mobile study. Every device must work and work well. You cannot run a survey without mobile respondents or you are guaranteed a nonrepresentative sample. Why is this even a conversation?

If you aren’t thinking mobile first, you are being stupid. We spend half of our time on our devices. It is a data quality issue. [Cannot agree with this comment enough]

Educating the researcher of the future – they need critical thinking and storytelling skills. We all need to be critical thinking experts, you shouldn’t in the business without that. We need to train the current workforce on how to do this. We’ve trained people on how to run cross-tabs but they need training on storytelling and turning insights into action.

Quick research doesn’t have to be quick and dirty or poor quality

The technology doesn’t matter, the platform doesn’t matter, we need to stop talking about the technology and focus on consultation, understanding the problem

Like this:

Researchers love numbers. We love frequencies, orders, and ranks. And what makes frequencies, orders, and ranks even better? When it’s about research!

We often see on the interweeb blog posts and stories ranking market research companies on things like most innovative, most creative, most compelling and more. It’s cool to see because in many cases, we voted on those things ourselves, whether by an actual survey/poll or through retweets and shares. But it puzzles me why we get caught up in because, of all people, we should know just how inaccurate and misleading they are.

Wanna know why?

I’m gonna vote for myself. And my company. And so is everyone else at my company. All five thousand of us.

I’m gonna retweet and share and reblog myself. And my company. And so is everyone else at my company. All five thousand of us.

Which, if you’re following, means the bigger your company is, the better your chances of being voted to the top.

If you and/or your company has been around a long time, you have a lot of top of mind awareness. Even if you’re boring as heck. Which means when I’m half asleep and trying to think of someone, ANYONE, I’ll probably think of you. And if you’re remotely interesting, I’ll probably write your name down. Even though you don’t really deserve it.

If you have a busy marketing team that keeps your business in the news constantly, even if you aren’t doing anything particularly interesting, you’ll earn a pile of top of mind awareness points.

If you’re a nobody, or have deliberately kept your business small and local, the global research industry has no clue who you are. Top of mind? Yeah, right. Votes? No way.

The good thing is, though, that if your company is relatively small, and relatively local, and relatively new, and you STILL make the #1 spot, well, my genuine congratulations to you. You are doing something right and deserve to be there.

Like this:

Welcome to my #Netgain6 MRIA live blogs. What happens at St. Andrews Conference Centre, gets blogged for all to read about. Each posting is published immediately after the speaker finishes. Any inaccuracies are my own. Any silly comments in [ ] are my own. Enjoy!

Factors for selecting suppliers – listen and understand needs, good relationship, completes on time, familiar with needs – price is not the core driver, WE created the price driven decision

From questioning to discussing, from asking to observing, from rational to emotional, from siloed to converged, from quarterly trackers to MROCs

Emerging techniques used today – Online communities, social media analytics, eye tracking, mobile surveys, text analystics, webcam interviews,mobile qual, mobile ethnography and all expected to double in use next year

Clients are concerned less with methodology and more with how will this method allow me to address my issue and sell more stuff. Don’t sell “we have cati and mobile and web.” Sell “we have solve these problems these ways.”

Emerging companies are already hiring in these areas and we need to do so as well, clients are already hiring for these as well

We want to hire psychologists, designers, moderators, developers, scientists, idea people not skills people. We need to let our current employees fulfill their potential. Your project manager just might be the most creative person there is.